Identity Crisis in Northern Ireland: Evidence from Sheridan’s Some Mother’s Son and George’s The Boxer

Hussein H. Zeidanin, Abdullah K. Shehabat

Abstract

Our paper entitled “ Identity Crisis in Northern Ireland” reflects upon the changes emerged on the identity of the Irish people in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the guerrilla warfare which the nationalists waged against unionists and the British subjects in Belfast for several decades in the twentieth century. According to Sheridan’s and George’s films, the ethnocultural conflict in Northern Ireland unveiled the patriarchal, racist and homogeneous paradigms of such nationalist organizations as the IRA whose overdependence on violence in its resistance to the British revitalizes the Machiavellian principle of “ends justifying means” and nurtures racism and cultural bigotry. Sheridan and George, we conclude, advocate the culturally tolerant and diverse ideology of multiculturalism to counteract the essential homogeny and chauvinism of nationalism as practiced by the IRA.